Persistent Rumors and Sad Reality

 Rumors that heroin is available in the BVI through drug peddlers have been circulating in the territory for at least two years. There is now hard evidence that the illicit drug is circulating in our islands and the Sandy Lane Centre Report 2003 points out that “several drug screening tests returned positive results for heroin”.

Heroin is a very dangerous drug that affects the central nervous system causing serious health problems, including death by overdose, collapsed veins, hepatitis, heart problems, depression, and pulmonary, liver, kidney and brain complications. The money made by drug peddlers in supplying heroin addicts encourages a continuous supply, and the need to finance purchases generates considerable property crime.

The Sandy Lane Centre has disclosed that in 2002,  “all of the clients who tested positive for heroin were marijuana addicts and the heroin was used to lace their marijuana”. The rehabilitation facility was burdened with 60 new clients last year: 45 males and 15 females; 15 of them between the ages of 12 and 21.

For the past six years the Centre has been forced to send some of their clients overseas for treatment. Many of the clients are crack addicted, homeless, and in need of the basic survival tools: a place to take a bath, get a change of clothes and a hot meal.

The 2003 Report states that last year “we did not just have calls from parents asking us to come and speak to their children about possible drug use, we saw real evidence of addicted teenagers, both young girls and young men, as two such clients had to be hospitalised for marijuana induced psychosis. The sad occurrence here is that the young girl was only 16 years of age and has in the past year given birth to a baby girl. She is still actively using marijuana.”

The Report goes on to state that “every year we are seeing more and more of our clients become homeless, unemployed, as well as younger in age; and for the first time we began hearing and seeing adolescent girls who are leaving High School because of drug use, an occurrence that was previously limited to teenage boys in the BVI.”

We fully agree with the conclusion reached by the Report: “To address the root causes of this escalation of drug use among teens, we must come up with a multi-pronged approach to address the problem. Parents need to be educated on substance abuse...community education has to be enhanced if we are going to be able to get the message out to parents and children that marijuana use is detrimental to their children’s mental health.”

It is quite clear that more money needs to be invested in educating and sensitizing the public about the drug problem in our community. There is a serious need to put a lot more emphasis on prevention and a dollar spent in that direction will save us thousands. In our humble opinion the Centre is distressingly under funded and drug prevention efforts need greater attention. Paying lip service and doing little will have catastrophic effects on our community. Time will tell whether we are the wise virgins or the foolish ones.